A Proper Movement

“All men have an instinct for conflict at least, all healthy men.” – Hillaire Beloc

No doubt Mr. Belloc would have enjoyed the skirmishes ever-present on Facebook in the months leading to the November 6th election. In fits of ideological purity, usually accompanied by that quite unnecessary third glass of wine, I found myself enjoying the role of judge, jury and censor, exiling unrepentant liberals from my Facebook real estate.

As many of our readers can personally attest, these conflicts were not limited to Democrat-Republican or conservative-liberal. Conservatives took shots at RINOs. Libertarians flayed conservatives. Even libertarians sparred amongst themselves, passionately trading blows over lesser evils and greater goods.

Conflict is healthy; it keeps our wits sharp and our ideas sound. And compromise, capitulation and bipartisanship – in the context of subordinating our Constitution to the whims and wants of democracy – are unhealthy, fatal actually, to the future of our Republic.

I gag when I hear post-election admonitions that Congress and the President should “work together” and “find common ground.” Working together and finding common ground always seem to result in a National Government that is bigger, more broke and more detached from its constitutional moorings. One cannot compromise on freedom and expect to remain free.

All that said, to become a proper movement, we need to repair and grow those natural alliances among folks with whom we share an actual overlap of issues. Tenthers, libertarians, gun owners, Ron Paul Republicans and Tea Partiers might not share agreement on every issue, but we share enough that we should immediately forge alliances on our common agenda. Each of our State chapters should organize liberty caucuses to support action items like nullifying Obamacare or NDAA, selling Federal lands to the States, or establishing legal tender alternatives to the Federal Reserve’s currency monopoly.

With these tactical alliances we can achieve success without sacrificing principles; we can grow our Tenther networks; and maybe in the process we can gain new friends to replace the ones we unceremoniously but for solid reasons deleted from Facebook.